The call for general elections for next July 23 has caused an earthquake in Spanish families who were pending to make vacation. Echoing that reaction, widely expressed in the social networksthe consumer organization facua has claimed this Tuesday to the Central Electoral Board (JEC) that includes family trips among the causes of exemption to be at a polling station. Specifically, it requests the JEC “to issue a new interpretative criterion of the causes for which citizens are exempt from participating in a table.” In the same line, the Organization of consumers and users (OCU) has requested that “the criteria be made more flexible to avoid an avalanche of claims for trip cancellations.” Travel agencyairlines, hotels and the tourism sector in general fear that cancellations will skyrocket due to force majeure and they will have to return to the affected consumers the amount corresponding to the holidays that they will not be able to enjoy if they have to be part of polling stations.
The OCU reminds citizens that if they are elected to form part of a polling station, and they already had a vacation previously contracted for that date, they have seven days to claim before the Zone Electoral Board what is the justified cause that prevents them from accepting the position , accompanying the aforementioned request, the documentation that accredits it, such as a hotel reservation or the purchase of a plane or train ticket.
change the rules
The OCU also considers that it is a good time to modify article 27 of the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime in order that the appointment of the President and members of the polling stations be voluntary. Likewise, OCU requests that an Instruction be issued by the Central Electoral Board, in exercise of the power attributed by the Law that establishes unified criteria on excuses for participation in the Electoral Tables. In the event that the Electoral Board denies the excuse alleged by those appointed, OCU recalls that we would be facing a case of force majeure, since it is a legal, unforeseen and unforeseeable obligation and that, therefore, vacations can be canceled without economic penalty. For this, it is not necessary to have contracted travel insurance, as it is an extraordinary circumstance that obliges the parties to repay their benefits by application of the Civil Code.
facua requests “sensitivity” from the JEC to the fact that the calling of elections on those dates, a high holiday tradition in Spain, “represents an unprecedented event in these years of our recent democratic history that can have serious consequences for those citizens who are called to participate in polling stations and as of today they already have contracted vacation trips”. In this sense, FACUA requests that those trips made as a family or whose purpose is to visit relatives, contracted prior to May 30 and that cannot be postponed or whose postponement causes significant economic damage, be considered family events of special relevance. And this to guarantee the exercise of their right to rest and family and personal reconciliation.
Causes to allege
According to the law firm legalitas, citizens called to the polling station cannot unilaterally refuse to attend the polling station because they have a social commitment such as a baptism, wedding or communion, but “they can allege the existence of that event as an excuse for be a member of the board. However, to be exempt from the obligation to appear, a series of requirements must be met: that the protagonist of that family event be the person concerned; that there is a family relationship up to the second degree; or that this event cannot be postponed or the postponement causes important economic damages.
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The Central Electoral Board establishes family events as possible reasons to get rid of the polling station, but vacations are not expressly included and the object of battle raised by the tourism sector and consumer organizations. According to the experts from Legálitas, “it is necessary to hope that the Electoral Board understands them as a family event and the economic damage must also be demonstrated in the event of their postponement or that it is not directly possible to postpone them.”
In this case, it is recommended that, in addition to presenting the payments made, reservations and others, a letter from the company where you work stating that the worker is entitled to vacation on that date, since they were requested and granted in advance. . In any case, the experts recognize that the criteria established by the Electoral Boards should be awaited, since in Instruction 6/2011 of the Electoral Board, which currently serves as the legal framework, vacations are not expressly included as an excuse to be able to exempt oneself from the polling station.